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Highlights for October 11
1776 Gen Benedict Arnold's Lake Champlain fleet defeated by British.
After failing to take Quebec the previous winter, Benedict Arnold was promoted to Brigadier General and was given the task of slowing down the inevitable British invasion down the St. Lawrence and Lake Champlain, to ultimately split the colonies into thirds.
In order to cross the portage from the St. Lawrence and into Champlain, the British fleet literally had to be knocked apart, moved overland, and reassembled on the northern shore of Champlain. Knowing the British Navy would be invincible in sweeping down Champlain, Arnold spent the previous summer in an amazing, little-known campaign to build a fleet to delay the British. From all over New England the rebel craftsmen came. Shipwrights, Lumberjacks, carpenters, canvas makers and sewers, caulking exports, fishermen, sailors, artillery men and sharpshooters -- accompanied by the customary families and camp followers, settling around Whitehall, at the very bottom of Lake Champlain, not far from Fort Ticonderoga (which currently was in American control).
Arnold, a gifted leader under ordinary times, worked to turn the green wood into a flotable navy of sorts. What emerged was a fleet of some eighteen gondolas, galleys, sail frigates, and other maneuverable but light ships built especially for the conditions on Lake Champlain. Gun boats that sprang leaks were caulked and relaunched. Canon were rolled aboard each ship and the soldiers and sailors assigned. Learning that The British were almost ready to set sail again at the end of September, Arnold guided his makeshift flotilla north to confront the British navy.
At the northern end, above Burlington, Vermont, were a number of long islands the British ships would have to sail past before coming into open water. The southernmost, Valcour Island, lay a few hundred yards off the coast of New York State. It was in Valcour Bay that Arnold gathered his fleet in a half moon formation facing south. The British, unaware of any plan to delay them, were busy hoisting full sail as the first chip cleared Valcour Island, when a lookout saw the rebel fleet waiting behind them. The attack force, under the command of Sir Guy Carleton, who had defended Quebec against Arnold's forces the previous January, was forced to turn back into the wind to face the American fleet. For the remainder of the day, as ships struggled into place within firing range, both sides exchanged a bombardment of ferocious fire power. The sun set quickly and a dense October fog enveloped both navies. Arnold called a council-of-war with his assorted commanders aboard his ship, where all agreed that all was lost. At first light the British would blow them out of the water.
Arnold and his officers decided on a crafty movement of their fleet by furling sails, weighing anchor, wrapping their oars in rags, and slipped silently southward between the British fleet and the New York shoe, often passing close enough for the hushed rebel ships to hear the laughter and singing aboard the British boats. Their escape was successfully, and once out of earshot, the sails were unfurled and the oars stripped of their rags. By the time the British rose for a leisurely tea before sinking the Americans, they discovered Arnold's trick and immediately set sail in hot pursuit. Considering the vast difference in canvas and speed the British had, it was only a few hours before they would swallow up the American flotilla. Boldly beaching his ships on Button Bay, Arnold left their sails raised and their colors flying. As the first British vessel pulled within firing distance, Arnold personally torched his entire fleet and hustled his crew to the safety of Fort Ticonderoga. It was a military thumbing of his nose at the outraged British.
The British did capture some fleeing Americans but, after looking at the calendar and skies and time of day, send their captives under a flag of truce to Ticonderoga, where they were able to tell the Americans that their desperate effort has succeeded. The British returned north, delaying the invasion for the next year.
Benedict Arnold would be waiting once again for them, at Saratoga.
1809 Meriwether Lewis dies along the Natchez Trace, Tennessee
On this day in 1809, the famous explorer Meriwether Lewis dies under mysterious circumstances in the early hours of the morning after stopping for the night at Grinder's Tavern along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee.
Three years earlier, Lewis and his co-commander, William Clark, had completed their brilliant exploration of the newly acquired Louisiana Territory and the Pacific Northwest. Justly famous and celebrated throughout the nation as a result, Lewis nonetheless found his return to civilized eastern life difficult. President Thomas Jefferson appointed him as governor of Louisiana Territory, but Lewis soon discovered that the complex politics and power struggles of the territory were earning him more enemies than friends. At the same time, bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., were questioning the legitimacy of some of the purchases Lewis had made for the expedition in 1803, raising the threat of bankruptcy if he were forced to cover these costs personally. Finally, some three years after the end of his journey, Lewis still had failed to complete the work necessary to publish the critically important scientific and geographical information he and Clark had gathered in their journals-much to the disappointment of his close friend and mentor, Thomas Jefferson.
For all these reasons, most recent historians have concluded that Lewis' death was a suicide brought on by deep depression and the heavy weight of worries he bore. According to the account given by Mrs. Grinder, the mistress of the tavern along the Natchez Trace where Lewis died, during his final hours Lewis began to pace in his room and talk aloud to himself "like a lawyer." She then heard a pistol shot and Lewis exclaiming, "O Lord!" After a second pistol shot, Lewis staggered from his room and called for help, reportedly saying, "O Madam! Give me some water, and heal my wounds." Strangely, Mrs. Grinder did nothing to help him; she later said that she was too afraid. The next morning servants went to his room where they reportedly found him "busily engaged in cutting himself from head to foot" with a razor. Fatally wounded in the abdomen, Lewis died shortly after sunrise.
Based largely on Mrs. Grinder's story, most historians have argued that Lewis tried to kill himself with two pistol shots, and when death did not come quickly enough, tried to finish the job with his razor. However, in a 1962 book, Suicide or Murder? The Strange Death of Governor Meriwether Lewis, the author Vardes Fisher raised questions about the reliability of Mrs. Grinder's story and suggested that Lewis might have actually been murdered, either by Mrs. Grinder's husband or bandits. Since then a minority of historians has continued to raise challenges to the suicide thesis. But ultimately, nearly two centuries after the event, we may never be able to discover exactly what happened that night along the Natchez Trace when one of the nation's greatest heroes died at the tragically young age of 35.
If you have other Birthdays or events to add for this day please E-Mail me.
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